Beyond its subject—human creativity—the Forum bears a few interesting connections to Lincoln Center Institute. Susan McCalmont, the new president of Creative Oklahoma, is a friend who has helped us greatly as an advisor to LCI’s Imagination Conversations initiative. Susan was formerly executive director of the Oklahoma City-based Kirkpatrick Foundation, which hosted the very first Imagination Conversation back in September 2009. And last fall, Creative Oklahoma hosted the 2010 Creativity World Forum, at which I was honored to speak.

It’s always pleasing for an author who has written about an idea to see that idea reappear spontaneously in public discussions. I’ve experienced this pleasure with the “ICI Continuum,” a concept that Eric Liu and I include in Imagination First and that refers to this relationship: “Imagination -> Creativity (imagination applied) -> Innovation (novel creativity)” (20). In other words, imagination is conceiving of what is not, creativity is doing something with that conception, and innovation is advancing the form in question. Seems commonsensical, right? People are starting to think so, happily, but there hasn’t always been robust agreement on these issues. Continue reading →